Kittys Drawings

Silly season is upon us.

I’ve been going a bit crazy with the sewing….and work is mental….got back from QLD yesterday…Um….not much time for other things. Though I must finish that latest pinup.

So – to tide you all over, here is my annual Xmas card…I usually whip up one of these to use as tags for any gifts that I give.

Til soon, bya!

Just to let you all know that posting may be slow in the next two weeks because…..

We’re moving house!!

Again. Last time I moved was February. And since I’ve been in Melbourne (2003) I’ve lived in about 7 different houses.  Sheesh, talk about itchy feet.

But this move was inevitable – living in a studio was only a temporary solution, and now the landlords have sold the property, the sooner we get out the better. Good for us because I absolutely LOATHE moving in summer.

I mean, the last time I was lugging stuff across town was on Black Saturday – yes, the hottest and worst day in Victoria’s history. 46 degrees celsius. Ouch!

Anyways, we’ve secured possibly the most awesome apartment in Melbourne. A nice big warehouse conversion with plenty of exposed brick, massive arched windows and three levels (2 mezzanines) with a bathroom on each floor.  As soon as me and Jonny walked in we pretty much fell in love! Teeheee. It has everything we need and more. We’ve already planned to dedicate the roomy second floor entirely to our creative pursuits. Yay I get a desk! There’s even room for a sewing machine AND my easel. Omg.

So it’s all happening very quickly – we’ll get the keys this weekend and move in over the space of two weeks.  And hence I might not get a chance to post for a while – considering we have to shift our internet account and who knows how long that will take to sort out. So please bear with me while I’m gone.

And as usual I hate to leave you with nothing to look at – so here’s a little something I did a while back. Me and Jonny have plans for this image and others like it but I’m not saying much about that just yet. Stay tuned though!

Woah it’s huge! LOL

Ciao!

We interrupt your scheduled broadcast to bring you breaking news….

Esz is ANGRY!

Angry at designers who think that just because you can’t see something in Illustrator, then it means it’s not there. GRR.

IT IS DAMMIT!! And it’s me that has to spend hours cleaning up your retarded mistakes.

Common complaints:

Masks. I hate them with a passion. They are the most overused feature of Illustrator. There are very few occasions where they are actually necessary. Using a mask to ‘cover up’ your misaligned and wonky boxes is not one of them. I still have to come in and try and figure out what’s supposed to be in the art or not.

Not checking in wireframe view: Hit “Cmd (Ctrl for you Windoze users), Y” to see your art in wireframe. Clean up those empty text boxes and art with zero fill that is not doing anything but taking up file space and giving me a headache.

Not using the coordinates. Those little numbers up under the menu bar are there for a reason. Use them. They will make sure all your boxes are actually boxes and your art lines up nicely. If your rectangle is meant to be 100mm x 100mm, then that’s what it should measure. Not 101.03mm x 109.652mm. Set your 0 point and build everything around that so it all lines up nicely. Don’t fudge it and line things up by eye and hope for the best. I still have to fix it cos that shit doesn’t PRINT.

RGB colour in a CMYK job: Keep your colours neat and tidy and all in the same colourspace please. It’s not hard to do. In fact, it’s harder to have them all over the place. So how does this happen exactly? It hurts my brain to wonder how you managed that one.

Dodgy spot colours: Okay, I can forgive you for using only CMYK in a job because I know your uni teachers taught you to use spot colours as little as possible. But when I tell you I need spot colours only – please don’t just rename the CMYK swatch as “PMS 109″. Renaming a swatch does not make it a Pantone colour. And please stick to using one colour book when referencing Pantones – Solid Coated, Uncoated or whatever, just use ONE.

Using the wrong tool for the job: InDesign is not the ideal program to use when creating art for flexible food packaging. We do not print pages. This goes for any design job, not just my line of work. Don’t use Photoshop for page layouts – photo editing and compositing only thanks. InDesign is only for multiple pages like magazines and books. Illustrator is for single page layouts and vector art. You are not doing yourself any favours by using the wrong program – your computer will run slower and your job will be much more difficult. Trust me on this one.

Use the Appearance panel: It’s been around for a while – but now with CS2 and upwards it’s got so much POWER. You don’t need to have two layers of text if you want to outline it in a different colour while preserving it’s appearance. Just move the stroke under the fill in the Appearance panel. Save some file space and save some time.

Not supplying linked files: When supplying art with photos included…please give me the photos you used too. Don’t just embed them. Yes, I can fix this thanks to the latest versions of Photoshop. But that doesn’t solve the problem if you’ve done something stupid like upscaled your photo in Illustrator. Actually, this leads me to my next problem.

Get your resolution right: If you don’t understand what resolution means and how to handle it – WHY ARE YOU A GRAPHIC DESIGNER? Add too, the difference between pixel and vector art. If this needs explaining then seriously, my brain will explode.

and finally….

Check with your printer: We all have different requirements for what we can and can’t print. Every printer is different. So ask. We will be eternally grateful. This goes for web too – I’m sure there’s plenty of coders out there who would agree with me.

That is all for now. I will leave you with an example of the difference between ‘normal’ view in Illustrator and what you see when you turn wireframes on. See the kind of stuff I have to put up with?

/end rant

PS. I’ve got a couple of sketches in the works so expect to see those soon!

Hi Everyone!

Something completely different from me once again!
A few weeks ago I got the CD with my latest schoolwork on it. This year I am going to be doing Certificate IV in Graphics PrePress – its the ‘post apprenticeship’ program which means only a couple more units that need doing. Two of those I am doing at work and the rest (I think three) I will be doing at school. When that will be I don’t know!

The most interesting of the on-the-job projects is the Advanced Typography one. There are two briefs we have to fill. One is a CD cover and the corresponding booklet and the second is this one – A muesli package design. Now this is really my forte I suppose when it comes to graphic design as it’s what I do every day. We don’t print on card but the considerations for food packaging are much the same across the board.

The most important thing is that type has to be legible. A lot of information usually has to be part of the design – things like the Nutritional Information, ingredients, addresses and the various certifications etc. These are often printed quite small and you really have to think about what font you’re going to use. A fail-safe in the food packaging industry is trusty old Helvetica. Many designers I’m sure think it’s boring and unimaginative – but really, nothing compares to Helvetica when you’ve only got a tiny space to fit 10 lines of text in.

Another thing to consider when creating a design for food packaging is colours. With magazine printing, you’re usually going to be able to get away with the standard CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). However, with packaging you are often working with special brand colours that must be very consistent across very large runs. Think of Bega red, Cadbury purple and Woolworths green. The only way to achieve the consistency you need is by using the Pantone Matching System colours (PMS). Plain CMYK can also get muddy and you don’t get such a wide variety of vibrant colours as you can get with the Pantones.
Also, sometimes you need more than just the colours you can see . In my line of work, for those vacuum sealed smoked hams you see in the fridge at the supermarket we need to add two opaque whites and also a clear varnish. It’s a bit easier to print on paper but it’s often you’ll need a varnish for that too.

Now for my design, the brief was to use CMYK plus two Pantone spot colours. I wanted to try something modern and sleek as it’s not something I’m often allowed at work (don’t ask!!!). The fonts I kept simple, using only Adobe Caslon and Neutraface. I’m loving Neutraface at the moment! It’s got a lot more edge than Helvetica, but it’s still easy to read and has a wide variety of styles within the font like small caps and different weights from thin to bold.
I’m no font genius, but I am absolutely obsessed with them! I can spend the majority of ‘design time’ picking a font. Each one has a personality and they all say a different thing. Neutraface is confident, timeless and cool
I chose Adobe Caslon for it’s beautiful ampersand (the ‘&’ symbol) – this was the basis of the design which I built the rest around. It’s also used in the Jasper’s logo.
The photos on the front I took off www.sxc.hu and comped them together in photoshop. I added the shadows and cut them out. Nothing too difficult there. The photo on the back came with the brief and is completely untouched at the moment.

There are still a few things I think that need tweeking. I’ve got to add a few more lines of text in which I’m a bit puzzled about at the moment. And I’m not too sure about the nutritional panel.

What do you think?

Speaking of apprenticeships and school…. I’m officially finished on the 28th of July! Yippee! I will get a proper salary (not that I’m not getting paid nicely already) and all that jazz. Yay!

This is the little icon I was talking about. For cult-of-pop.com it’s gonna be used for the movie review system and soon to be on tshirts. Yay!

Now the kitty has colour! And a frame too, plus a bit of a shadow. I think I quite like this. Still nice and simple. I guess I will have to show SJ now – but I have become quite partial to this little kitty.

Other news – I am heading down to see my parents in Tassie for a WHOLE WEEK in May. Yay! I get to play with my letterpress. I can’t wait to take some photos as well as have a go at using it.

It’s gonna be interesting cos I really don’t have any firm idea of how to work it all. Thankfully, my Heidelberg is auto-feeding and there is little chance of me lopping some fingers off during it’s running. I’ll have Dad to supervise anyway and he’s good with machinery.

I am going to see if I can get some plates made here at work and find some other materials to see if I can do some tests on it. I’ll need some paper and some ink. Does anyone know where I can get some letterpress ink here in Australia? I only need one colour for now and only a very small amount.

Somehow I’ll scrounge together a little business with all this. I don’t have a press name yet or anything (been wracking my brain for ages now) or a solid timeline for when I will start for real…but I’ll get there. I know that my style is more suited to fine art prints and maybe business cards – wedding invites aren’t quite my forte. The line version of this cat is what I hope will be my first ever print. Can’t wait!

I’ve put the little kitty through the Illustrator machine. Ah the wonders of Live Trace. Tweaked a bit of course, to get the lines smooth.

I’m a little bit at a loss as to where to go from here. The line is just so nice I don’t know if I should add colour or text…or….Umm…I dunno! 

Suggestions?